113. THEIR BEARING ON THE PROBLEM OF ITS VALIDITY.

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Before proceeding let us here glance at the bearing of these two

theories respectively on the epistemological problem of the

validity of our intellectual concepts and judgments concerning

external material reality. When in previous chapters (ix.-xii.)

we were engaged in establishing the objective and real validity

1 This of course is the view of those who hold that the sense qualities do not

exist in the extramental reality formally, as they are perceived, but only virtually or

causally (cf. infra, 121, 125). Of these JEANNIERE gives a long list, op. cit., pp.

426-7, including such names as FROBES, S.J. ; BALZER, S.J. ; DE LA TAILLE ; R. DE

SINETY; GRONDER, S.J. ; BALMES; DOMET DE VORGES ; PIAT ; PALMIERI, S.J. ;

MAHER, S.J. ; LAHR ; SORTAJS ; MATTIUSSI ; DE MUNNYNCK, O.P. ; GUTBERLET;

SCHMIDT; HAGEMAN ; DE BROGUE ; MERCIER and the Louvain School. Cf.,

however, infra, 113, p. 70, n. 2.

a Cf. infra, 124.

70 THEOR Y OF KNO WLEDGE

of intellectual concepts, we pointed out repeatedly that there are

two steps in the process of vindication : firstly, that of showing

that the concepts are derived from, and grounded in, and validly

applicable to, the concrete individual data of the domain of

sense consciousness ; and secondly, that of showing that these

latter are themselves real, i.e. revelations or manifestations of

reality to the knowing mind. The first step was accomplished

in the chapters just referred to. With the second we are con

cerned in the chapters of Part IV.

Now those who hold the theory of mediate or representative

sense perception realize that since in their view the data or objects

directly and immediately attained by perception are not extra-

mental external reality, but only intramental or intra-conscious

objects of the individual s awareness, they have still to explain,

and to justify before the bar of reflecting reason, the process

whereby the conscious subject transcends those internal objects

of awareness to know external reality. So far as we can ascer

tain, the transition is held by many to be virtually effected in the

purely sense process itself. Perception would be a sense process

of cognitively apprehending something through something else

(percipere = per-capere], i.e. extended, external reality through the

internal data or objects of direct awareness, presumably because

of the felt features of extended externality in these latter. And

it is held to ^formally effected in the spontaneous judgment of

external existence, which accompanies such perceptions and

whereby the perceiver interprets the latter as revealing to him an

external domain of reality. 1 But this judgment has to be ration

ally justified ; and, as we have seen, they justify it mainly if not

exclusively by an appeal to the principle of causality. -

But our perceptions are accompanied not merely by spontane

ous judgments of existence, but also by spontaneous judgments

about the qualities and nature of the externally existing reality.

For we spontaneously judge that the latter has all those qualities

which we have called the primary and secondary qualities of

matter, or the common and proper sensibles : that it is a real

manifold of corporeal substances or bodies (" niultitudo "), which

1 Cf. JEANNIERE, op. cit., p. 398 (6).

2 This mode of justification is employed not by representationists alone. For

instance, Mercier, who employs it, holds that " we have a direct sense intuition of

external things, and, without intermediary, form the abstract notion of what they

are" (op. cit., p. 386 ; r/. supra, p. 60).

PERCEPTION OF SENSE QUALITIES 7 t

have real size and shape (" magnitude" "forma" "figura"}, rest

and motion (" quies" " motus"\ colour, sound, taste, smell,

temperature, impenetrability, etc. But now, if the senses, sever

ally or collectively, reveal to the pevceiver directly and immediately

only mental objects or data, internal to the perceiver, what can

the latter know by means of these, or how can he know anything

by means of them, about the real qualities and nature of the

extramental, external universe ? The reply is that whatever he

can know he does know by inference through the principle of

causality, and the principle of similarity of effect to cause. 1 The

internal objects or data are representations of qualities in the ex

ternal reality ; they are specifically determined in the perceiver

by the influence of the external reality ; as effects they must have

an adequate cause ; therefore, corresponding to the specific and

mutually irreducible differences in the conscious representations,

he can infer that there must be analogous, mutually irreducible,

real, and really distinct qualities in the extramental or external

material universe. 2 The real qualities which are in matter in the

absence of perception, and independently of the latter, and which

are the causes of the directly apprehended data which we call

smells, tastes, colours, sounds, heat or cold, hardness or softness or

roughness or smoothness of texture, pressures and resistances,

are not indeed univocal with their effects in the conscious perceiver ;

how could a quality of inert, inanimate matter be univocally the

same as the effect wrought by it or the datum produced by it in

a vital, conscious, perceptive mind ? but they must, withal, be

analogous to the latter, for the latter are cognitive reproductions

or representations produced in the mind by the external material

qualities : they are mental effects which cognitively assimilate

the perceiving mind to the perceived external reality which is

their cause, perception as a cognitive process consisting precisely

in this assimilation. We are clearly warranted, therefore, by the

principle of causality, in inferring not merely that there is or

exists, corresponding to the conscious sense representations, an

external reality (whose real qualities and nature must remain un

knowable, which is Kant s position, or of whose real qualities

the conscious representations are mere symbols and can give us

no positive information, which is Spencer s equally agnostic

theory of "symbolic" or "transfigured" realism a ), but also in

1 Cf. infra, chap. xix. 2 Cf. JEANNIERE, op. cit., pp. 425-6 ; infra, 125.

3 Cf. MAHER, op. cit., pp. 123-4 ; infra, 125.

72 TITROR V OF KNO H LEDGE

inferring that this reality is a manifold of corporeal substances en

dowed with qualities, of the ontological constitution of which, as

they are in themselves, we have not indeed such univocal know

ledge as would be afforded by direct and immediate conscious

intuition of them, but an analogical knowledge based on direct

intuition of their effects in consciousness, and which knowledge,

so far as it goes, conveys real and genuine information about the

material universe.

Such is the main contention of moderate or critical realism as

propounded especially by scholastic supporters of the theory of

mediate or representative sense perception, 1 and as distinguished

from the so-called "natural," " naif," "ingenuous" realism of

perceptionists. It recognizes the existence of a serious epistemo-

logical problem/ that, namely, of justifying the realistic inter

pretation of sense perception as a process through which we are

enabled to reach a certainly valid knowledge of the existence,

1 Cf. JEANNIERE (op. cit., p. 229, and n. i), where he meets this difficulty, urged

from such an agnostic standpoint as that of Kantism : "A thing cannot be known by the

[consciously, directly apprehended] impression it produces ; lor (a) the impression is

not the thing ; (b) nor is it an effect that faithfully expresses [or represents or mirrors]

the thing ; for (c) it is an effect received by [or wrought in] the [conscious] subject

and received conformably with the mode of being of the latter [secundum modum

recipientis]. Wherefore there is no relation of resemblance between the impression

and the thing." In reply to (fc) and (c) he points out that there are in sense con

sciousness concrete sense-complexes which, compared with one another, are seen to

be totally heterogeneous and absolutely and ultimately irreducible to one another,

complexes, for instance, which intellect conceives as a horse-complex, or an apple-tree-

complex, etc. (cf. vol. i., 91, p. 351) ; and that these demand in the extramental reality

which is the cause of them, on the principle operari scqnitiir esse, and as a sufficient

reason of their irreducible diversities, a corresponding irreducible diversity of effici

ent energies or real qualities : inasmuch as such wholly heterogeneous effects could

not be rationally accounted for by attributing them to one and the same supposed

homogeneous cause (or " causa equivoca" cf. Ontology, 98, c, d, g, h ; 104). And

concluding, thus, that metaphysical agnosticism is refuted by the proved necessity of

recognizing a " specific heterogeneity " in the extramental reality, he supposes this

final question to be addressed to him : What is it, in the extramental reality, that

constitutes ontological ly or really the sufficient reason of such or such a sensation

(" onion," " honey," " cheese," etc.) ? To which question he replies : " Je if en

sais rien. Et si le perceptioniste le sail, qu il le disc. I don t know. And if the

perceptionist knows let him inform us." Cf. op. cit., pp. 392-400 ; 411-24 ; and

especially 425-8.

8 Cf. JEANNIERE, op. cit., p. 395 n. : " If the external world is given to us in a

subjective representation, it is clear that both de facto and de jure the problem arises :

What is the value of this representation ? Does it present the world as it is, or does

it transform the message entrusted to it ? If sense data be purely subjective states,

that is to say wholly unrelated to the non-subjective, then the mind is irremediably

shut up within itself. Hence subjectivism, agnosticism, solipsism, idealism ; hence

also modernism, which looks like a hopeless effort to escape from the black hole

with its doom of mental suffocation."

PERCEPTION OF SENSE QUALITIES 73

qualities, and nature of an external material universe ; and in

their chosen line of defence its advocates claim that they cannot

fairly be charged with betraying the realist position by granting

too much to idealism. 1

What, now, is the epistemological problem for the percep-

tionist? If "the object perceived \>y the senses is identically the

external object" 2 if we apprehend the real non-Ego " in the same

way, i.e. just as immediately " 3 as the real Ego, it is obvious that

the problem of justifying the validity of sense perception will

" assume a wholly different form " 4 from that in which it presents

itself to the representationist. It will not now be the problem of

discovering whether and how the external world can be, and be

known to be, "conformable to its sense representation ": 5 the

perceptionist will meet the problem, thus stated, " by a nego sup-

positum" since he holds that world to be immediately given

in perception.

The problem for him will be firstly, to show that even though

the real non-Ego or external universe " be as immediately and

identically given " 7 in consciousness as the real Ego, nevertheless

error is possible in regard to it, or in other words that we may

and sometimes do judge it to be otherwise than it really is.

This, indeed, will not be difficult to show. For although error is

equally impossible in regard to the " internal data " s wherein the

real self is supposed to be given, and the " external data " 9 wherein

the real non-self is supposed to be given, i.e. considering those

data as mere facts or objects of awareness (96-100), nevertheless

just as error is possible and notoriously prevalent in regard to the

real nature of the Ego, which " is given by identity and not in

a [mental or representative] substitute," so it is possible and

actually prevalent in regard to the real nature of the " identically

given " external universe. How it is possible in both cases alike

will appear later. Briefly it is because knowledge does not consist

in a mere passive awareness of a continuous flow of ultimate

fractional elements of objective reality (whether self or non-self

reality) presented simultaneously and successively in an ever-

changing panorama to the conscious subject ; but is a mental

1 C/. GRUNDER, S.J., De Qualitatibus Sensibilibus (Herder, 1911), pp. 12-20;

JEANNIERE, op. cit., p. 427, who after citing a long array of names in support of re-

presentationism says, " Quare non amplius decet hanc sententiam tanquam fidei

ruinosam damnare ".

a jEANNiKRE, op. cit., p. 394 n. "Ibid. *Ibid.

5 Ibid. ti lbid. -Ibid. * Ibid. y Ibid.

74 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

interpretation of all this, a process of comparing and relating the

ultimate fractional elements directly given to the knower, a pro

cess of giving meaning and restoring unity and order to the

apprehended data, of piecing them out and reconstructing them

as it were, so that by the possession of this intellectually elabor

ated and inter-related and systematized product, called science,

the mind of the knower is pro tanto conformed or assimilated to

reality. And this being so, the fact that each of the ultimate

elements immediately given to us, whether in our percepts or in

our concepts, is " given necessarily as it is," l and is, as such,

objectively real, does not at all involve that our judgments are

always and necessarily true, or that " we can never be deceived "

(22, 75).

Secondly and principally, the perceptionist will have (a) to

show, as against idealists, that the arguments on which these

rely as proving that the mind can know nothing about extramental

reality, are inconclusive ; and (b} to show that the difficulties

urged against perceptionism from the fact that things often appear

to the senses otherzvise than they really are, do not really conflict

with perceptionism rightly understood ; or, in other words, to

show that the apparent discrepancy between the way in which

external things appear in sense perception and the way in which

they really are together with the consequent error of the unre

flecting, spontaneous interpretations of sense evidence arises

from want of advertence to the fact that the manner in which

such things appear to sense must be in a certain measure depend

ent on, and influenced by, and relative to, the organic conditions

of the sentient, perceptive self or subject (106). If it can be

shown that the discrepancy is compatible with the direct sense

intuition of data that are really external, and that the inadvertence

can be rectified by reflection on the conditions required for a

right interpretation of these data, then the reasons for abandoning

perceptionism and falling back on the theory of mediate or repre

sentative perception will have been shown to be insufficient.

Whether the perceptionist theory will stand the test of the diffi

culties remains to be seen. 3

With a view to approaching the question as to what we can

know of the qualities and nature of the external universe we

must next examine the distinction referred to above (106) be

tween "proper" and "common" sensibles, the relation of these

, op. cit., p. 394 n. Ibid. *Cf. infra, chaps, xix., xx.

PERCEPTION OF SENSE QUALITIES 75

to intellect, and to certain thought-objects which are in them

selves or per se attainable only by intellect in and through the

data of sense and cannot be described as "sensible" or "objects

of sense " except " per accidens " (" sensibilia per accidens ").